~ I hope you can appreciate my mundaneness as much as I do.

Category Archives: Be Crafty

I like to wrap gifts. I buy pretty paper on super sale after Christmas, and hoard it until the time comes to use it. However, sometime i run out of paper, and its 3 in the morning and Target has the audacity to be closed. Or frankly, some things don’t get my pretty wrapping paper. So for those times, I like to use what I happen to have on hand. In this case, its magazines.

So here’s a quick 1,2,3 on making wrapping paper out of magazines.

1, 2, 3

1.) All you need is pages from a magazine, A glue stick and scissors to smooth the edges if the pages are raggedy from being torn out, like mine. I found a few pages of the same color. Sometimes i like to use pictures from the same photo shoots in fashion magazines as they tend to create a cohesive picture, but this time, i was going for the color – Carmex yellow!

2.) Glue the edges of the paper together. There should only be a tiny bit of overlap. Let dry.

3.) Wrap your gift.

I also made that bow from a tutorial i found on pinterest, also from a page in a magazine.

So, there you have it. Super easy, a little more fun than newspaper, particularly if you’re like me, and haven’t seen a real newspaper in a couple of years.

I did a quick google/pinterest search to see if there was something like this out there and I didn’t see anything. But IF i am copying someone else, please let them know that I’m sorry my ring is better than theirs. Ha!

I’m going to show you how to make this:

Cute, right? RIGHT?!

So here is what you’ll need:

Got that Egyptian Musk off the oil guy on 87th and the Dan Ryan

– Super Glue – I prefer the gel kind with the fancy tip. But i would like to add the caveat that no matter what kind you use, you will still glue your finger tips together.

– embroidery floss, as many colors as you’d like

– Wire cutting pliers thingies…yes, that’s the technical term

– Wire – the wire i used is so cheap, it doesn’t tell you the gauge. It just says “craft wire” and costs a dollar at Wal-Mart. You can use any gauge as long as you can wrap thread around it… I’d go thicker and flexible…

– Scissors to cut your floss

– Something that’s about the circumference of your finger OR you can use your actual finger. I like to keep it real so i used a bottle of Egyptian Musk essential oil. *black power fist*

– The beads are optional… And need to be large enough to string on the wire.

Okay so your first step is to decide how many times you want the ring wrapped around your finger. I like odd numbers, so I went with 5. Five time around my skinny (size 7) fingers = about 13 inches of wire.

Now you want to wrap the floss around the wire.

I put a little dab of super glue to anchor the thread, the began wrapping it around the wire, until I was about a quarter of the way down. Then I put another dab of glue to secure it to the wire and added another color.

You see there’s a little overlap between the colors. Thats because the floss can sometimes slide, and I don’t want any wire exposed unless I expose it.

For this one, I added a few beads:

I also left a space of exposed wire because i like the way that looks. Dont feel like you need to do that if you don’t want to. Here’s the finished wire:

Now you wrap. Take you bottle of Egyptian Musk or your finger or whatever you’re using, and wrap the wire around it.

Once you remove it, you should have something that looks like this:

If you’d like to keep the coil loose and able to resize, you’re done. But I don’t, so there’s a couple more steps to finish.

Fold the loose end behind the coil like so:

Take an accent color of floss and wrap around the tucked coils. Secure with a tiny drop of super glue. Keep in mind that after ripping your fingers apart a few times, it doesn’t even hurt anymore.

Now you’re done. Here’s another shot of the finished product:

And here’s one in yellow and grey with 3 coils…

And now concludes my very first online craft tutorial. If you like this one, I’ll see if i can show you how to make my über complicated Grown Up Friendship Bracelet, featured on my etsy shop (bind and coil @ etsy, link in the right column),

I work in a cubicle farm. Aisles upon aisles of beige, or sometimes grey, boring lifeless cubicles.

It’s sad, really…

I am also an avid fan of HGTV. I could watch it all day because most of the time they manage to do exactly what I needed to – do a whole lot to move and inspire people’s homes with not a whole lot of resources. Any my office is my “home away from home” right? So after a good episode of Designed to Sell, I decided to “renovate” my office.

Here’s the before:

Awesome, right? Lots of beige…And yet I’m supposed to come up with the latest and greatest innovative ideas here…

So i got some fabric from Ikea, T-pins, and some personal affects and voila!

My Office, After

No, those plants arent real. Over sized file cabinet gone, allowing more space for company. A small side table with magazines to entertain, and personal items to make my home away from home a little more like me… Now, I can come up with some great ideas…